Expelled

[PauloftheWest]

Everyone,

http://expelledthemovie.com/

Has anyone else heard of this move? If you haven't I guess that helps prove his point. I hope he defines everything correctly because I've heard people get Intelligent Design, Creationism, Natural Selection, and Evolution confused when they are 4 different things. That and I hope it is a good movie, not a stupid flame or something like that because ID doesn't get much credit.

Also, I saw one of the trailers. Is Bill O'Riely a jerk (because he would interject all the time and NOT listen)? I ask because that was the first time I've seen him...

~PauloftheWest

[Musica42]

Looks like something I'd like to see. Having not seen the movie I can't comment on it, but I can comment on that clip of Ben Stein and O'Reilly. To answer your question Paul, I dislike O'Reilly not because he's rude and a blowhard (that's what makes him actually fun to watch) but because he uses rhetoric and terrible leaps of logic to make points that I often don't agree with. To an ever greater extent I hate Dennis Miller for the same reasons. Anyway, a very clear example of his shitty logic passed off as insight is in the clip where he basically states that since evolution can't explain the origin of life, it follows that creationism must be correct - huh?

I'm also a bit perturbed by Stein's argument that denial of tenure or losing of one's collegiate jobs equates to a free speech issue. I'll put this in terms of my own experience via music school: school's don't give tenure to professors that don't toe the line and write/teach the kinds of music that are in vogue in the academic arena. You will not be hired or tenured at UNT if you write "pretty" or "pleasant" music. You have to be an experimental type composer to even get your foot in the door. In fact I've seen them be openly hostile to commercial-oriented composers and they honestly seem to not know what to do with students that want to write like John Williams. It's really the same situation as Stein is mentioning (music having much lower stakes of course). But since a college is such a special bubble-like zone, where your typical rules of society really don't apply, I think it's a horrible place to use as a basis for an argument about society as a whole.

[Musica42]

Relating back to my second paragraph, here's a pretty pertinent excerpt from one my favorite autobiographies, The Real Frank Zappa Book:

"One of the things that determines the curriculum in music schools is: which of the current fashions in modern music gets the most grant money from the mysterious benefactors in Foundation-Land. For a while there, unless you were doing serial music (in which the pitches have numbers, the dynamics have numbers, the vertical densities have numbers, etc.) - if it didn't have a pedigree like that, it wasn't a good piece of music. Critics and academicians stood by, waiting to tell you what a piece of shit your opus was if your numbers didn't add up. (Forget what it sounded like, or whether it moved anybody, or what it was about. The most important thing was the numbers.)

The foundations that provide grant money for people engaged in these pursuits occasionally decide to stop funding one style of music after becoming entranced with another. For instance, it used to be that they would fund only boop-beep stuff (serial and/or electronic composition). Now they're funding only minimalism (simplistic, repetitive composition, easy to rehearse and, therefore, cost-effective). So what gets taught in school? Minimalism. Why? Because it can be FUNDED. Net cultural result? Monochromonotony.

In order to gain status at the university, a professor or composer in residence has to be plugged into something that's really hot - something FUNDABLE, and, as of this writing, the secret word is MINIMALISM. So, after a busy semester grading the papers of their minimalist trainees, they adjust their berets and fill out the request forms for 'foundation assistance.' Students and instructors alike compete annually for pieces of this pie.

One day, these cultural institutions are going to stop funding minimalist music and fund something else, and the Serious Music Landscape will be littered with the shriveled remains of 'expert graduate minimalists.'"

I suppose the point being again that colleges have their own special rules they play by and pretending that the bullshit that goes on there is indicative of our entire culture is pretty far from the mark.

[PauloftheWest]

Musica42,

Ya, tenure is more based on what is important to the current faculty. Usually you want different types of professors (that also gets funding) so you can have a well rounded faculty. Although you may be able to call it discrimination.

I think it would be interesting to see what he has to say. That and I usually find Ben Stein pretty funny.

~PauloftheWest